City of Heroes: 04 Respecification
by SailorMoonV
Summary: An encounter with a Rikti Magus sets Cale Westmarch on a path that ultimately hits him where it really hurts.... his magic.


City of Heroes "Respecification"

(From the journal of Cale Westmarch)  
(July 2005)

To explain the underlying problem to another would sound very much like the opening of a joke. Indeed, if the punchline had any actual humor to it, I myself might have considered laughing if the consequences hadn't been so dire. It goes like this: What do you get when you cross a dimension-hopping Rikti with a Circle of Thorns mystic from Oranbega?

A respecification of one of the fundamental cornerstones of Magic as I know it that consequently screws over a full third of my magical abilities.

Explaining the details of magic to the uninitated is far from an easy task, but what it all essentially boils down to is mathematics. Very intricate and exotic math, granted, but it can be understood by those who have a natural affinity for such things. At the core of this eldritch domain of math are the Entities, a triad of higher powers who are directly involved in the weaving of spells and their related equations: Grey, who has domain over all that moves; Joule, who controls the strength of energy and force; and Hermes, who acts not directly but indirectly in many ways.

When I cast a spell, using the mana stored in my body to craft equations that invoke a specific effect, what I am really doing is calling on the powers of the Entities. It is not all that unlike a preacher calling on his deity for aid, only with a ritual that is far more rigorous and exacting than any Nazi perfectionist. The years spent learning the magical arts are divided into two very distinct stages, learning the elements of eldritch mathematics and then discovering how to combine them. Think of how a child must first learn what the numbers are and what they mean before then going on to learn how to make use of them.

Weaving magic is not easy, and is in fact downright exhausting. There are no written universals for a given spell, as each equation is unique to a given individual. There are general concepts that can be taught, granted, which is how one may teach another, but the actual process for invoking a given spell can only be discovered by the student. You learn as you go, and after awhile you develop a feel for how things work. This in turn allows an experienced magic-user to find ways to augment or enhance certain magics, usually by the inclusion of a link to a particular Entity through the use of tokens or other small artifacts. These new links are added into the spell as one would add a new variable to any common math equation. The new equation would then have to be rebalanced and most likely rewritten in part, but if you know what you're doing it can be achieved with a minimum of pain and suffering.

My most cherished magical spell, which I've named my Sniper Shot for its long range and tendency for lethal results, was one of the first powers I tried to augment as such. Secured all around my person are a number of etched coins that I have been able to acquire from Azuria and others, each one linked to the Entities in their own way and subsequently "attached" to my spells. It is not a physical attachment, mind you, as they remain on my belt at all times, but rather they have been included in the eldritch equation through an intricate binding process. When the spell is cast, the links to the tokens are woven into the threads of mana drawn from my spirit and thus augment the completed magic. The enhancements themselves are not overly stable and tend to require replacement every so often, not to mention are permanently bound to a single spell once used, but one is expected to pay a price for power.

Even without these augmentations, however, virtually all of my spells are tied to the Entities in one fashion or another. My powers of Flight, for example, are linked to Grey while my energy blasts are linked to Joule. Should the core mathematics change somehow, they will have a very direct effect on my ability to cast them effectively. In simple terms, it would be akin to having "one plus two equals three" suddenly change to be "one plus two equals four" with unsavory results. Just imagine the confusion that could result to so basic a change, then imagine it getting even worse if the alteration was done without any warning whatsoever.

Which brings me back to the part about the Rikti and the Thorn mage.

I truthfully have yet to figure out how precisely it happened, but to say it didn't happen would place me in a state of deep denial. It all started with an internal rebellion of sorts within the ranks of the Rikti, something about traditionalist and restructurist factions. As I crossed one of the dimensional boundaries through the Portal Corporation gateways, I found myself having to fend off and defeat a magic-using Rikti overlord.

The fact that some of the Rikti were learning magic disturbed me in ways that few non-magic-users could even begin to comprehend. Bad enough that they had alien weapons and technology that were largely superior to our own, but to also have in their power a force that could almost literally reshape the world as we know it? I knew then and there that this endeavor of theirs had to be stopped at all costs.

Their ultimate goal, it seemed, was to find a way to remove the magical barriers that enshrouded the planet Earth in their original dimension, thus allowing reinforcements to arrive and tilt the balance in their favor. The image of an elephant sitting on a seesaw with a child seated on the other end came to mind in terms of just how far the balance would be tipped by such an action.

The chase led into the depths of the lost city Oranbega itself, a vast focus of magic energy and power where they sought to unleash their new powers in an attempt at piercing the magical veil. I was able to disrupt their plans, of course, as I am a hero after all... but not before they were able to apply a partial twist to some of the cosmic threading. It must have been a localized effect, for no other magic-user I spoke to seemed to have this problem, but the only explanation I can fathom to explain my current situation is that they influenced my magical powers by altering my perception of the mathematical constants.

I cannot explain it well enough to make perfect sense to others, how only my magic can be affected by a change in a fundamental aspect of the eldritch mathematics, but Azuria seems to understand to a degree. She said that it was a phenomenon called respecification, in which the internal energies of a person was upset enough to unbalance known equations. She also warned me that I would have to essentially relearn all of my spells from scratch to conform to this new reality, and that not all of them would be available anymore. She then suggested that I relocate myself to a remote spot, preferably off the coast of either Talos Island or Peregrine Island, where I could rediscover and try to rebalance my powers without decimating half the city if I had an accident.

To say that I was upset at this discovery would be an understatement along the lines of referring to a tornado as a small air disturbance. I nonetheless took her advice and caught the Atlas Park tram to Skyway City, and from there spent the better part of the day walking along the overpasses and bridges to a distant corner of Talos Island. Once suitably isolated from the rest of the city, I sat down and began to see what that 'respecification' had done to me.

It seemed that my understanding of the Entity Grey was the most disrupted concept of all, as precious few of my travel powers worked anymore. My Flight spell was corrupted into near-uselessness and no amount of rebalancing seemed to be able to restore it to what it was. My ability to Teleport an ally to my side was lost, as I was unable to even construct the dimensional matrix in the most basic of mathematical terms, let alone one complex enough to relocate another living being from "there" to "here."

Fortunately for my peace of mind my precious energy blasts were largely unaffected, requiring only the smallest of rebalances to bring them back into line with the power of Joule. The augmentations to the magics, each enhanced by a token devoted to the keen eyesight of Grey, required far more work to iron out but were ultimately stabilized to my satisfaction.

My self-empowerment spells, linked for the most part to the Entity Hermes, were a more than a little jumbled but still useable if I didn't mind a reduced level of effectiveness. I suspected that as time wore on I would be able to relink the rest of my token augmentations, but I was not too worried for their loss given the fact that they were due to be replaced shortly any way. As for my healing scanner, aided by a few simple links to both Joule and Hermes that I had feared corrupted, the device seemed to function perfectly fine for having been recently used to the point of overheating.

Satisfied that I wouldn't explode in a nuclear nova of energy simply by sneezing, I started to head back to the island-city of Talos. Feeling more than a little impatient and still not able to trust my reduced flying powers, I started to jog along the roadway... only to burst into a hyper-velocity run that ended when I planted my face against an unusually large rock formation that honestly seemed to leap out in front of me before I could dodge.

It took several minutes for my senses to refocus on my surroundings and even longer for me to determine that the medical scanner, for whatever reasons of its own, no longer worked on headaches. Setting the device aside, I very carefully sat down to consider this new development. Obviously I had stumbled onto a new equation of sorts, a new level of magic that allowed me to travel at superspeed and had to be properly examined if I were to ever walk again at my own pace.

Night had fallen on the island by the time I had the eldritch equations worked out to my satisfaction. It was, as I had suspected, a rather curious by-product of the warping of my understanding of Grey's powers. He was, after all, the Entity of Travel and Movement and thus the one who was guiding my footsteps whenever magic was invoked. With my curiosity now aroused and having managed to avoid setting the grass on fire from previous experiments gone awry, I began a methodical probing of the wide array of Grey variables and how they could now be assembled in functional synergy with my mana.

Do not ask me how much time passed between when I started and when I was finished, for I remember very little outside of my experimentation. I seem to recall a point in which I had to deal with a passing hero who had some form of weather-control ability, as I am almost certain there was a point in which it rained pretty heavily on me without warning. His presence might have something to do with the large char ring around me when I finally returned my focus to my surroundings, but that could have been a result of of many things that I am not at all eager to discover or otherwise learn what precisely had transpired. The profusion of cat hair on my cape, for instance...

Once I was finished, I discovered to my immense surprise that I now had the ability to walk in the shadows, even when in broad daylight. My footsteps would be muted even on the hardest of surfaces and light would tend to curve around me as if I simply didn't exist. My rejoiceful enthusiasm at such a gift of stealth lasted for only a few moments before I began to ponder its sudden origin. Granted it could have been Grey's influence, as he was the Entity of Travel and Movement, but what if it was something else instead?

Was it a minor legacy from the one who had trained me back in my original dimension? Was it more of the tainted energies of the dark mistress that I currently am bound to? Or, perhaps, was something even more sinister at work? Could that Rikti Magus have had a greater impact on me than I had realized? Magic does not darken of its own accord, especially when it is bound to the soul of the caster as all equations and enhancements are.

It would be a question that would be with me for quite awhile, echoing in my head long after I rose to my feet and began to casually head back into the strange realm known as the City of Heroes...

Cale Westmarch

Liberty Server

(Original formatting stored at www sailormoonv net) 


End file.
